Mail carrier admits to revealing investigation

ATLANTA – A mail carrier from Fayetteville pleaded guilty to relating to a federal investigation.

Randall T. Smith, 53, in June 2008 revealed a federal criminal investigation to the suspect of the probe, authorities said Wednesday. Smith pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a single misdemeanor count of disclosing confidential information and faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine when U.S. Magistrate Judge E. Clayton Scofield III sentences him in January.

“This mail carrier revealed the existence of a federal investigation to an unauthorized individual, and provided details of how the agents were acquiring evidence in the case,” U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said in a news release. “This type of leak and abuse of position is not acceptable and he now has a federal criminal record.”

Smith was working as a mail carrier in East Point at the time of the leak, authorities said. In a release, investigators did not provide additional details about the investigation the mail carrier revealed.

“This defendant attempted to get in the way of our mission to protect the nation’s mail system,” Martin D. Phanco, postal inspector in charge of the Atlanta Division, said in a news release. “He was entrusted as a postal employee with sensitive information and chose the wrong side.”